Month: July 2003

EU Proposal to Ban Sexual Stereotypes in Media Gets Chilly Reception

This month the European Union had a controversy on its hands when the Financial Times got hold of a secret 26-page draft directive being prepared under the auspices of the European Commission’s Social Affairs Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou.

Article 4 of the draft proposed sweeping censorship of the media in order to banish any and all sexual stereotypes of men and women. As Richard Pollock noted in an op-ed for the Cato Institute on the proposal, Diamantopoulou’s office said that the goal was to,

. . . avoid throughout all forms of mass media notably all stereotypical portrayals of women and men as well as any projection of unacceptable images of men and women affecting human dignity and decency in advertisements.

Some European commentators noted that in order for such proposals to go into effect, they would have to go through a series of ratification processes including among member countries, but just the fact that freedom of speech is seen as something that can be casually interfered with to obtain some social goal or another is disturbing enough in and of itself.

As Pollock, who obtained a copy of the draft, noted,

The document is well thought out, indicating a sizable amount of work had progressed within the European Commission to advance to this late stage. It was not the work of an aberrant or idle commissioner. Apparently, no member of the European media knew of its existence as it passed through the EC labyrinth of bureaucratic offices, reviewers and officials.

This sort of legislation is exactly what feminist group such as the European Women’s Lobby have long been lobbying for with the European Union. European Women’s Lobby policy coordinator Cecile Greobval was quoted by Australian newspaper The Age as saying, “We want action by the EU in areas other than employment.”

The European Women’s Lobby openly called for government monitoring and censorship of mass media in a March 2003 policy statement on the subject,

2.1 Mass media and gender equality

Comprehensive policy frameworks and regulatory mechanisms need to be put in place in order to make the media a useful tool to promote a and contribute to greater gender justice, respect for women?s human rights, sustainable development, and a culture of peace.

  • Governments need to formulate standards, based on equality between women and men that should be reflected in all communication productions, including programming and media portrayal.
  • Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms should be put in place in order to halt sexism and gender-based stereotypes in mass media, including strengthened policies against sexist images in publicity.
  • Governments must develop policies for the safeguarding and development of public broadcasting, community based media, women?s alternative media, and alternative print media in order to counteract the negative trends of the commercialisation of information in national and transnational media and ICT corporations.
  • Governments and relevant bodies should implement programmes that will increase women’s access to media, including assigning resources to promote gender equality through the use of both mainstream and alternative media.
  • Governments should put in place policies and financial support, including within international cooperation programmes, with regard to support the strengthening of women?s communication and media initiatives.
  • Gender balance need to be established at all decision-making levels within the media industry. This could be achieved through measures such as affirmative action and quota systems.
  • A media critical analysis should be supported, in order to raise awareness of both audiences and journalists on how gender power asymmetries are at play in the media. Feminist analysis should be made an integral part of the curriculum in journalism schools.

    Back in 2000, it summarized its views on government media regulations as follows,

    While the role of governments is weakening, the media is becoming more powerful and complex, therefore, it is essential to re-establish a balance, in order to secure respect for women?s human rights and dignity. In order to impose restraints on sex stereotypes and sexist image in the different media and in the world of publicity, measures, mechanisms and bodies to regulate the content of media productions are essential. Currently, the media is auto-regulated which is often reduced to closed consultation with the managers and the proprietors of the media industry.

    Many years ago in the United States, movies would be reviewed by quasi-governmental film boards before being released to the general public. The film boards would order the elimination of anything that might offend anyone in the audience, focusing especially on anything of a sexual nature. The Pennsylvania Film Board, for example, required that all images of a pregnant woman be excised from Cecil B. DeMilles’ “Kindling” on the grounds that it would raise questions of sexuality among the children who might see the film.

    Some European feminists apparently believe that system was so good that they would like to replicate it for all mass media and have government regulators determine what is and is not fit for audiences to see.

    Sources:

    Sexist ads face ban in gender agenda. The Age (Australia), June 24, 2003.

    Human Dignity At The Eu Stomps On Degrading Women / Men. Grant Swank, Ameircan Daily, June 30, 2003.

    EU: Tabloids’ Topless Attractions Safe. Paul Ames, Associated Press, June 27, 2003.

    The New Europe Looks a Little Like ‘1984’. Richard Pollock, Cato Institute, July 8, 2003.

    Contribution of the European Women?s Lobby to the CSW, New York, 3-14 March 2003. European Women’s Lobby, March 2003.

    Women and the media. Europan Women’s Lobby, 2000.

    UK Considers Guaranteeing Alleged Victims in Domestic Violence Cases Anonymity

    The British government is considering a change in its laws that would guarantee alleged victims of domestic violence the same privacy granted to individuals in rape, divorce and sexual abuse cases. In the United States legal guarantees of privacy are only afforded to minors in such cases, but in Great Britain apparently the courts extend privacy to adults in such cases as well.

    The change in the law has an odd motivation — the Home Office is concerned about the number of women who withdraw their allegations of domestic violence before the case against the alleged perpetrator can go to trial. An unidentified Labor Party source told The Independent (UK),

    We need to address the problem of women who have suffered abuse and want the police to act but don’t want all their family and sexual history put on display. People in the family courts or who have been sexually abused don’t have their identity revealed but in many cases the same personal information will be disclosed in domestic violence cases.

    But, of course, in the case of a marital domestic violence case it’s going to be difficult to hide the identity of the alleged victim unless the identity of the alleged perpetrator is also going to be made private.

    Second, it seems to be a dubious contention at best that women withdraw their allegations of violence because of fear of publicity over the case. This assumes that victims of domestic violence always perceive their interests as best served by a legal prosecution of their victimizer but are being thwarted by an invasive media. The Labor government should be called to provide some evidence for that sort of claim.

    That being said, the practice of granting anonymity to individuals involved in legal cases should be done only with great care and when the damage likely to be done to the individuals far outweighs the need for transparency in such processes. It’s hard to imagine, for example, how British citizens are served by having divorced proceedings hide the identity of litigants. Similarly, although the press in the United States generally chooses not to run the identity of alleged rape victims by custom, making it illegal to do so is an unnecessary limitation on the transparency of such legal actions.

    Source:

    Battered women may get right to anonymity in court. Marie Woolf, The Independent (UK), June 11, 2003.

    A Look at Legalized Prostitution in Europe

    The BBC carried a report this week about proposals in Belgium to legalize — and heavily tax — prostitution in that country. Faced with a budget deficit, Belgian lawmakers are considering a bill to legalize the world’s oldest profession and, in return, force sex workers to pay a tax that would raise up to 50 million euros for the cash-strapped country.

    Both Germany and the Netherlands have similar schemes, but at least one advocate for prostitutes claims that in those countries prostitutes simply exchanged one form of economic exploitation for another. The BBC quotes Marion Detlefs who works at a prostitute advice center in Germany as saying,

    It has, however, been very difficult [to make the transition from illegal to legal]. When it was set up there was much talk of securing proper contracts, proper health insurance but a lot of this hasn’t materializes because of big holes in the legislation. At the moment it looks like all the government cares about is getting their hands on sex workers’ money — women who are already hard-up are giving their earnings away and getting very little return.

    Meanwhile, the BBC reports that in the Netherlands the law legalizing prostitution only allows Dutch and EU citizens to work as prostitutes — effectively keeping immigrant prostitutes as part of the illegal, underground economy without the protections of legalization.

    Source:

    Making sex pay. Clare Murphy, The BBC, July 16, 2003.

    Eric Alterman’s Rationalization of Anti-Semitism

    Eric Atlerman is taking some heat over comments he made regarding
    attacks against Jews in France. Alterman complains,

    I got a ton of mail yesterday, some of it abusive,
    complaining about my comments on attacks against French Jews.
    Roughly half of the e-mails accused me of “blaming the victims”
    because I stated that the attacks, undertaken virtually exclusively
    by young immigrant Arabs, were inspired by the Israeli occupation of
    Palestine and could be ameliorated by ending that occupation. Well,
    I didn’t “blame” anyone. I merely explained what I understand to be
    the sources of Arab anger.

    Give me a break. Of course Alterman was blaming the victim. Can you
    imagine him seriously writing something like,

    Roughly half of the e-mails accused me of “blaming the
    victims” because I stated that the attacks against abortion
    providers, undertaken virtually exclusively by pro-lifers, were
    inspired by the large numbers of abortions and could be ameliorated
    by overturning Roe v. Wade. Well, I didn’t “blame” anyone. I merely
    explained what I understand to be the sources of Eric Rudolph’s
    anger.

    or maybe,

    Roughly half of the e-mails accused me of “blaming the
    victims” because I stated that the attacks against African
    Americans, undertaken virtually exclusively by young white males,
    were inspired by affirmative action and could be ameliorated by
    overturning affirmative action policies. Well, I didn’t “blame”
    anyone. I merely explained what I understand to be the sources of
    racist skinhead anger.

    Okay, maybe Alterman would be willing to rationalize that these are
    anything other than blaming the victim, but would anyone take him
    seriously? No, of course not.

    The Origin of Species Added

    Over the past couple weeks or so I’ve been spending time here and there putting Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species on this site. In many ways, the tools at my disposal to do this are as cool as all of the weblogging with automatic RSS generation.

    My version of The Origin of Species started off with the Project Gutenberg text of the book. Then I added paragraph level anchors to the text. Next, I created a copy of that and added visible permalinks. The final version uses a cookie to let users toggle back and forth between hiding and showing the visible permalinks. A Javascript that Seth Dillingham wrote provides a nice highlight of a paragraph if you use an URL with a paragraph-level anchor.

    The last touch was a navigation system at the top and bottom of each chapter. That’s not toggable (though it could be) but it and the visible permalinks do disappear if you choose the print-only version. Really little stuff that adds up.

    Darwin’s book is probably available dozens of places, but I like having it on my server in a form that I find most useful (and that I don’t have to worry about disappearing or changing URLs on me). And it makes my evolution page all that more complete.

    I hope to have all of Darwin’s major works up and in this format by the end of the summer.

    AIDS In Africa

    Earlier this month someone in South Africa leaked an unpublished government report on the anti-AIDS drugs. Although the South African government has refused to buy or distribute anti-AIDS drugs due to a host of objections, the leaked report estimated that making anti-AIDS drugs available could save the lives of as many as 1.7 million South Africans over the next seven years.

    Although the report was completed in March, the South African government claimed that it was simply a first draft and that it is doing all it can to treat AIDS patients.

    In the past, South African government officials have trotted out every excuse from the expense of the drugs to claims that they need to be tested more thoroughly before they could be used in South Africa.

    Meanwhile, in a visit to Africa U.S. president George W. Bush promised $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa which put pressure on European nations to contribute billions as well.

    Speaking before the International Aids Society conference, Nelson Mandela said that Bush had “moved the debate from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of billions of dollars.”

    Sources:

    SA Aids deaths report leaked. The BBC, July 14, 2003.

    Can Africa handle AIDS drugs? Patrick Jackson, The BBC, July 15, 2003.

    Recipe for Disaster. The Star (South Africa), July 17, 2003.

    Mandela assails global injustice of AIDS crisis. Sarah Boseley and Rory Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald, July 15, 2003.